Tuesday, July 6, 2010

With the holiday weekend, and various other activities this past week, I wasn't able to get my Work of Art review of the shelf when I wanted. And I still have a list of other topics backing up. Alas.

I wanted to briefly remark on Work of Art's tackling--if not so well--of a sensitive subject- Shock Art. Contestants were presented with a gallery of work by well-known shock artist Andres Serrano. He's known for his entire exhibition called 'Shit', photographs of bodies in morgues, and perhaps most famously for his work called 'Piss Christ', which gained much notoriety since it was at least in part paid for by public National Endowment of the Arts funds. Because of the graphic nature of his work I leave it to you to follow his Wikipedia page to get a glimpse of some of what he has done.

The contestants had a day to create something shocking, something that would catch not only the eyes of the regular judges and viewers, but of Serrano himself. Certainly no small task. It doesn't help to put on an exhibition for a man who can say, "I've done that, only grosser." Personally I don't think anyone really stood out as 'shocking'. In fact Chris and I laid in bed for a while trying to decide what our work of art would be if we were in their shoes (my mind instantly went to the morgue, but since Serrano did that in 1992 I couldn't claim first rights).

Abdi was the winner of this weeks challenge, with a piece I never truly understood or found that shocking, and two contestants went home. The first was Nao, a performance artist who herself didn't know what she was performing, and the second was John, winner of last week's challenge. I personally got his concept, but agreed with the judges that he didn't go as far as he could with it.

So, everyone set your DVRs or sit down for tomorrow night's episode so we can find out what new, and hopefully interesting, challenge the producers have in store for us.